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3 | County Jail
- Northeastern University Press
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22 C h a p t e r T h r e e County Jail For to survive in the mouth of this dragon we call America , we have to learn this first and most vital lesson—that we were never meant to survive. Not as human beings. — Audre Lorde It was now the middle of the night, and Tammy sat in a small cage in the jail while the guards outside verbally abused her. You could hear them right outside your bull pen, laughing with their friends, eating, and making jokes. “Who’s going to process her?” “I don’t feel like it,” “I don’t feel like smelling her,” “I just don’t feel like this crap tonight.” I heard one say, “I’m getting off in a little while, you do her.” All women. As she waited in the bull pen, Tammy continued to cry. Three hours passed before she was taken out for fingerprinting and photographing. The mug shots are probably the worst part for me. The number is given to you. I actually had to hold it because the chain holding the number that goes around the neck was missing. You are photographed from the front and then from the side. It was bad to me. It sealed my fate. In my mind the picture was captured for posterity, forever. There was C o u n t y J a i l • 23 nothing that I could do about it. I’ve looked at mug shots and the part that gets me is how anybody can smile in a mug shot. I was still crying in mine. You have to understand , too, that when that shot is taken, you have already spent a night elsewhere. So by the time you get to the processing in the county jail you are disheveled and in shambles. And if this weren’t bad enough, the ensuing strip search brought home the reality of Tammy’s new status. A sheriff’s deputy barked at Tammy, “You’ll stop crying right now, we don’t have time for that, get up and strip.” First of all they ask you to remove everything that you have on, minus your underwear. Your clothes are tagged and put into a plastic bag. Then your undergarments have to be examined . So you remove your panties and your bra. You have to shake the panties and turn the bra cup inside out. The guard takes them, examines them for any tears and breaks around the cups, and if there aren’t any, you are given them back. The guards wear rubber gloves during this process. Then the guard asked the now totally naked Tammy to squat three times and cough. She was then required to bend over and spread her buttocks while the guard looked inside. Next, she was asked to lift her breasts up, turn the palms of her hands out, hold up the bottoms of her feet while spreading her toes, open her mouth wide, take her fingers and run them backwards through her hair, and undergo an ear inspection. It was very degrading to spread my buttocks. Lifting my breasts and all of those things were not hard or degrading because I looked in their eyes and I wasn’t a person anyway. It wasn’t like they were invading my privacy, because they didn’t see me as a human being. And you could see it in their eyes, that you weren’t a person. The officer gave Tammy a blue uniform that was big and baggy and had a number stamped on it, an outfit resembling the scrubs worn by [3.239.15.46] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 16:01 GMT) C h a p t e r T h r e e • 24 medical operating room personnel. And upstairs she then went to the division that was to be her home for the next thirty days. Tammy’s new residence was a jail cell, a ten-by-ten-foot cinderblock room with a bunk bed set with pencil-thin mattresses. A narrow window at one end was covered by a mesh so thick that no light came through. Guards used a small slot, a three-inch-by-twelve-inch slit in the cell’s steel door, to monitor the prisoners. A steel toilet, without lid or seat, and a small sink completed the cell’s furnishings. Apparently at one time or other prisoners had removed seats...